Blogged too soon... CEng!

Breaking news - within an hour of that last post going up, I received confirmation from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers that I've been elected to Membership of the institution. I'm officially approved to be a chartered engineer. This is a really, really big deal for me.

In practical terms, the main difference it makes is that I pay a higher subscription fee, and I can be struck off as a Chartered Engineer if I don't abide by the code of conduct. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is. In the UK (unlike some other countries), engineer is not a protected title - anyone can term themselves an engineer. So, though I've always said for the last nineteen years that I was an engineer, on paper, at least, I was just the owner of two engineering qualifications, both over 11 years old who worked in academia and taught engineering. So, I doubt many would quibble with my describing myself as an engineer, but there's no guarantee that I'm a good engineer, or a safe engineer.

Chartered Engineer on the other hand, is a protected title. You can be prosecuted for claiming to be chartered if you aren't, so having chartered status acts as a badge of quality assurance. It also commits you to a code of conduct which includes continuing professional development, and to not making claims that are beyond your expertise. Just because I studied thermodynamics sixteen years ago and can still give you the basic principles, doesn't make me competent to design a complex heating system. So in some ways, just as you would expect a surgeon, or a doctor, or a lawyer who abused their position or misbehaved to be struck off, a Chartered Engineer can. Unlike a qualification, chartered status is something that has to be maintained.

The Engineering Council offers a good discussion of these issues and why they haven't pushed for engineer to be a protected title here:

https://www.engc.org.uk/glossary-faqs/frequently-asked-questions/status-of-engineers/

Why does this matter so much to me? I'm an academic, so CEng status is largely, well, academic. I teach on a Product Design programme, I don't need to be chartered to do my job. Yet, it ties in strongly with the whole concept of the Engineering Imagination. About what engineering is for, and why we do it. I've increasingly come to think of engineering as an identity, not just a profession: a way of looking at the world, for better or for worse.

Anyway, enough rambling - I just think it dovetails nicely into the writing I hope to do here on the Engineering Imagination. Here's to an interesting summer on the blog...

weeks commencing 11th July: Back to the Imagination

A slightly belated update - largely because holiday, graduations, and meetings haven't left me a lot of time to write, and partly because there isn't much to say of great interest. PSAT (the postural sway assessment tool) continues to tick along nicely - some of the key technical hurdles that I feared we'd hit have proven surmountable, so it's looking very promising. I've grappled with LabVIEW simulations to put the finishing touches to a paper, and with MS Project as I put together a gantt chart for an EPSRC proposal (a very involved process, since it's inevitably only in putting the gantt chart together that you spot a lot some of the issues that arise - this is where tools such as MS Project or Open Proj are much, much better than just drawing bars in Word or Excel).

Perhaps the most interesting thing that has cropped up in the last couple of weeks, have been discussions with people like Stuart Murray and Sita Popat on robots and their applications, on phenomenology, which have had me thinking once again about the Engineering Imagination - the concept that really started this blog. Between Margrit Schildrik's talk, a robot being used to deliver a bomb to kill in a police operation and attending the Robotic Surgery workshop, and picking up a copy of "Think Like an Engineer" that I spotted in Blackwell's opposite the University, I've been coming back to a lot of the issues around intent in engineering, and the time seems ripe to start unpacking that a little more, and I'd like to do that on the blog this summer. I had set myself the task of reading up on some of these issues again, but I thought that actually, it would be better for me to give my gut response first, and then do the reading up. So (touch wood), I'll be putting in some extra blog posts that contain some of my musings on these issues, rather than just updates on my week...

w/c 4th July: Back in the Saddle

It's been a busy week, but at least it's been a week of kicking things off for the summer. My PhD student Oscar Giles is now starting a 7-month placement rebuilding the postural sway assessment tool developed as part of Ian Flatters' PhD. We're under way with two networks, and I've been starting on a particularly exciting paper (alas - the details will remain on the QT until it's published!). I've been finalising a fellowship proposal - though this has largely meant grappling with first Open Project and then MS Project. It's not exciting, but it's a good discipline, and one you're very, very glad of when you actually get funding and suddenly have to deliver!
    Most significant, though were a lecture from Margrit Shildrik on Rethinking Prostheses and a workshop on Robotic Surgery. Both thought-provoking and interesting, and both more than I can write up here. I think they'll each take a  blogpost in their own right...

Busy, Busy, Busy

I was going to call this post "The Beginning of the End", in honour of the gradual winding down that occurs as exhibitions and exams finish. So manic has this period been, however, that it has now wound down and, er, ended before I got round to pressing send. Such is blogging: there is an irony that when things are at their most interesting, you're too busy to blog. At times like this, micro-blogging through Twitter is a lifeline - a reminder that you haven't died, fallen off a cliff or fallen seriously ill (and it is now fully twelve months since I returned to work!).

But why have I been so busy? Exams, coursework, exhibitions, of course. Exam boards, too. This week has seen course and module reviews, not to mention planning for the summer, and the background chaos of our current politics, which is hard to avoid - especially as it increasingly resembles an episode of House of Cards or Game of Thrones. Truly, these are interesting times.

This week has been one of those liminal spaces that crop up in academic life. The exams rush suddenly over, you emerge into the summer - things that have been dropped must be picked up, new projects started. Planning is frustrating, and not very rewarding, but very necessary. I learned long ago that you can't just drop your teaching and work on the first (or most interesting) piece of research that comes along.

It hasn't all been planning. After much effort, we've finally got a multidisciplinary reading group together, which has now met three times, involving Stuart Murray from English and Sita Popat from Performing Arts. Its focus is on technology and the body, particularly in terms of post humanism. We've read and discussed Johnny Mnemonic, Tony Prescott's response to the EPSRC principles of robotics, and Louis Bucciarelli's Between Thought and Object in Engineering Design. Some great and varied pieces - I'll try to get my thoughts written up here at some point. It's been a great experience, very thought provoking, and good to get the views of other disciplines. It has also won us  small amount of funding from the University for a series of seminars on Augmenting the Body over the next academic year. It should be good.

I'm also part of an AHRC network on the Technical and Ethical challenges of Electronic Tagging, focusing on offenders, dementia patients and children with Anthea Hucksleby (Professor of Law), Kevin Macnish  (researcher on the ethics of surveillance), and Justin Keen (healthcare). You'll notice that I'm getting closer to a full house on my multidisciplinary bingo card...

Anyway, we're organising a series of workshops over the next academic year  (it's going go be a busy academic year...), and held our first proper meeting to plan it his week. We held on til after the referendum, in the hopes it would provide some clarity.  Much help that was!

So that's this week. Next week, it shifts to being all about delivery: I'm looking forward to it!

8(!) weeks commencing 22nd Feb

Did anyone see where March went? I was convinced it was about a month since I last blogged, but when I logged on at last, I found it’s been almost eight weeks. That went fast! It’s the last day of Easter holidays for our students, and teaching begins afresh on Monday, though many of our Level 3 and 4 students – now just a few weeks from handing in dissertations that will be as much as a third of their final mark – have been around all Easter.

And my word, it’s been busy:  as you’ll know if you’ve been following my Twitter feed! Over these eight weeks, I have:

• Attended an IMPRESS workshop on Faecal Incontinence;
• Examined two PhDs (one in Bristol, one here in Leeds);
• Attended the first of Prof Stuart Murray’s seminars on representation of the body (reading Johnny Mnemonic, in this case);
• Built the WHISPER prototype and demonstrated it at two focus groups;
• Attended and presented at the CWUAAT 2016 conference;
• Killed off FATKAT 2.0
• Built FATKAT 3.0

All this over and above delivering teaching up to the 18th of March, dealing with family commitments during school holidays, and supervising PhD and project students throughout. Not bad, all told. I could probably write a blog post on each of them – and I hope to – but in the interest of quitting while I’m ahead (rather than risk delaying the update for another eight weeks!), I’ll sign off there!

w/c 15th Feb: Metaphorical Noodles

It struck me this week that a good analogy for this time of year is noodles. As in, long and thin – not wet and floppy. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.
Academia isn’t so much a feast or famine job, more feast or very well fed: there’s always more you could be doing, but some periods are more chocabloc than others. This is one such season.  That means there are lots of little jobs that need doing, and there is no chance you can free up a day or half day to work on one thing. Everything has to be tackled piece by piece. Each day (apart from delivering teaching, supervising PhD students, attending meetings and helping out with Open Days), I have an assignment to mark, a foot force rig to make, an upate to FATKAT to implement, two theses to examine, two of my own students whose theses need feedback and the WHISPER prototypes to build. That’s eight things to juggle.

That means that each day, I spend some time reading my students’ theses; some time making a prototype; and some time reading theses to examine. This also means that each thing takes a long time: I’ve the least three weeks working on all eight things in parallel. You’ll note that papers and proposals have been dropped entirely. The rigs and prototypes are the priority right now, for if they aren’t ready in the current window of opportunity, then that’s it: all papers and grant applications that would follow from them blink abruptly out of existence. So it’s short term pain for long term gain. You have to play the long game.

Of course, this means a period of the classic “doing much but getting nothing done”. You work for little, but none of these things are completed. Of course, the smart time manager breaks their tasks into smaller goals. Design it; make it; test it; calibrate it; read this chapter. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this week was more of the same. Not very interesting for a blog, but hey – that’s life. In the coming week or so, we hopefully have a Stuart Murray seminar on Johnny Mnemonic and post humanism; an IMPRESS workshop on foecal incontinence; and the first WHISPER focus group.

So if you’re thinking: I wish he’d shut up about all the interesting things he’s working on and get to some actual results – your wish will soon be granted. Except for the shutting up bit. :op

w/c 8th Feb: Exhibitions and Open Days

February is one of our busiest times of the year. Open days are in full swing, coursework from the end of last semester needs marking (noting that Semester 1 ends at the end of the January exam period - not Christmas), and new coursework is being set. And teaching needs to be delivered and research and papers and admin, of course. And the undergraduate projects are in full swing now: and this week it was exhibition time. The level 3 Product Design students had their interim exhibition on Thursday, which meant seven solid hours of viva and marking; the level 4 team projects were demonstrating their progress.

All busy times, but also the point where projects become very real: moving from theory to prototype. It's a satisfying point. Had I thought more about it, I'd have taken some photos to share. But I was so busy marking it totally slipped my mind - there's a lesson for next year!

What else this week? Sixteen hours of teaching, seven of marking, five of reading theses and four of applicant day didn't leave a lot of spare time. I did, however manage to attend a presentation by the IMechE's Denis Healy on getting registered for CEng. It's been on my mind for a while now: I'll have been graduated 15 years this summer. It's about time I put myself forward, or I never will.

And WHISPER, of course. I've finalised the design of the Wearable Haptic Assessment Toolkit (WHAT - I couldn't resist it). I just need to get the parts and build them now. Exciting times!